Sunday, December 7, 2008

More on the Food Raid in Ohio

When officers from the Lorain County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio arrived lastMonday at the Manna Storehousefood cooperative in LaGrange with weapons drawn and trained on Katie Stowers andher children, along with her in-laws, there was one member of the familymissing.Katie’s husband, Chad, is a U.S. Navy Seabee, helping inconstruction projects in the midst of combat in Iraq. He’s been there, separatedfrom his family, for the last five months, supposedly protecting our rights fromabuse—the sort of abuse that appears to be taking place on an ever-more-frequentbasis at farms and food outlets around the country.I should point out thatKatie didn’t broadcast the information about her husband to me—I inquired aboutit after she had to interrupt our telephone conversation to take a call fromChad in Iraq. Presumably, she was updating him about the raid he missed, inwhich sheriff’s deputies, together with food inspectors from the Lorain CountyHealth Department and the Ohio Department of Agriculture, herded the family intoa home living room, and kept them under the guard of armed officers for aboutseven hours, while they executed a search warrant, taking food, cell phones,three computers, and business records. I asked Lorain if she was aware of theirony of her husband putting his life on the line in Iraq, while she was beingheld at gunpoint in her home by American law enforcement officials, and shesaid, “It occurred to me.”The reason for the heavy-handed treatment? That’snot certain, since Lorain County officials won’t comment, except to say they areconducting “an investigation.” Katie Stowers says the only reason she’s aware ofis a possible disagreement over whether the cooperative should be licensed as aretail establishment. A year ago, county health department officials arrivedwanting to do an inspection, which the Stowers refused to allow, pending receiptof a written explanation. “We sent them a letter, asking why. We never receiveda response”...until Monday.Manna Storehouse describes itself as a “naturalfood co-op” that has been supplying members with beef, turkey, dairy products(including pasteurized and unhomogenized milk; photo above from its web site),and other products, for the last nine years. The Stowers family’s experiencelast Monday has been described on a few web sites, including thisone.Katie Stowers said the account is pretty much accurate. She says theofficials showed up with a warrant, but that they didn’t identify themselves orsay why they were there. “We don’t know who it was.”The raid appears to havebeen launched under the auspices of the Lorain County Health Department, whichsent food inspectors. It involved the Ohio Department of Agriculture, which hadtwo employees there “in a supportive role,” according to a Lorain County HealthDepartment employee, Joyce Davis. And then there were the armed guys from thesheriff’s office. The health department referred me to the Lorrain Countyprosecutor, Dennis Will, for more information, but he didn’t return mycall.It’s getting so that such heavyhanded raids on peaceful farmers andnatural food distributors, which have long been exceptions in this country, aregetting to be the rule. We’ve seen them in the cases of GaryOaks in Cincinnati, Richard Hebron in Michigan, Mark Nolt in Pennsylvania, Nature’sJuice Co-op in Illinois. And as we saw in the Meadowsweet Dairy case, judgesdon't seem to care any more about abuses of search warrants and questionableseizures of goods. (For background on cases I alluded without links, there aremultiple postings, accessible via the search function.)I suspect the LorainCounty officials figured this was just another case of weirdo foodies, andneglected to consider that even weirdo foodie family members fight for theircountry in faroff lands.